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Forum:Unity: an idea, a movement... a proposal.
The Initial Plea This discussion is related to the name thread and the NPOV thread and (to a lesser degree) the ongoing attempt to define "POV" and list ways it's being dealt with around this wiki. To a lesser degree it's something I hope will resonate specifically with Nhprman, because I feel that what I'm proposing is consonant with the excellent suggestions in his user page. First let me say, I'm here as a partisan. I'm a partisan for transforming the 2008 elections in a wave of as many different netroots movements and online communities as possible... including this wiki. However, as cool as the net is, I see politics in a representative democracy as being oriented, ultimately and eventually, towards *voting*... and to be honest, America's voting system sucks... our congress is full of "representatives" who could care less about "not my party" voters... our President is elected by an antiquated electoral college on top of a "pluarity of favorites" balloting system known by mathematicians, political scientists, and economists to be much worse than many alternatives... and the elections are quite possibly being rigged. My personal hope for fixing this in 2008 is the Unity Movement. They want to have an *online* convention with at least 20,000,000 Americans... hopefully with all Americans on the net... to elect a presidential ticket composed of the Republican and a Democrat (in either order) or independents. If this convention uses a better voting system, like Ranked Pairs Voting, then I suspect that the candidate selected will be so cool that she'll actually have a chance in the 2008 Novmeber elections. If the grassroots/netroots selected her and likes her, I suspect that we'll be able to take a page from the Howard Dean campaign and run a "$50 revolution" and get 10,000,000 people to give her ($50 * 10M equals) half a billion dollars to get elected. How does this relate to this wiki? I suggest that this wiki should rename itself "the Unity Wiki" or some such. I suggest that we make a place for every POV under the sun and encourage them all to vote in the Unity Convention. This wiki would be the place where all the factions and all the ideas in America would be able to live next to each other, competing like hell on issues, and cooperating on the goal of getting all voices respected in the voting booths in November 2008. I'm just going to say: my edits have been and will continue to be pushing this wiki in a direction vaguely consistent with this goal. I'm just trying to get conversation on this. When the naysayeres bring up valid criticisms I'll probably change to accomodate them... plus some people might not be naysayers and I'm looking for help! :-) There's a "preference ballot poll" (with IRV tablulation that I'm not so hot on, but it's what's on the web right now) for people to vote on the name of this wiki. This shows the kind of approach I'm trying to get for a "Unity Wiki" (and the Unity Movement, for that matter): highly transparent, open to many competing visions, with frequent votes on "the stuff we need to cooperate on" using algorithms that find centrist positions. So what do you say? (And go vote on the name!) - JenniferForUnity 23:28, 19 July 2006 (UTC) you net-people scare the heck outta me. i hope some of you see and understand how totally skewed your conceptions of fairness and representation are. oooh- heres a proposal! lets create an entire new form of elitist snobs based entirely on the "technology" and "science" of the "inter-net". oh good idea! yes i thought so too! yay! wait a sec- can there be math involved? yeah, ok, lets add some algorithms. woohoo! im in! this will be much better than all the other misguided attempts at fairness and representation since there are so many less people involved and all of the elites will be really really smart this time. count me as sarcastic and unconvinced.--Vive42 06:26, 23 July 2006 (UTC) :I'm giving totally the wrong impression if that's what I sound like. Ouch. :-( This seems so populist to me. Where is the imrpression of snobbery coming from? The tone I'm trying for is "transparency, inclusion, fairness, and 'can do' spirit". If I can't enthuse wiki people with this sort of thing should I just give up and spend my time on friends, art, and money? :If lots of "non net people" aren't involved and helped, then I see the Unity thing (and this wiki for that matter) as having been totally pointless. I'm guilty as charged on the counts of (1) thinking the Internet is approximately as transforming of society as printing presses and television, and (2) thinking the mathematics of social choice has advanced a lot since the late 1700s. (If legislatures were appointed by proportional representation and their votes (and those for the president) were aggregated using a method that fulfilled the Condorcet criterion I think it would do so much more good than stopping gerrymandering or fiddling with campaign finance laws. And the unity convention offers a 'slim slim'' chance to get that to happen.) :If these sorts of issues don't bubble into mass consciousness and eventually get legally adopted then it seems I'll have wasted (not completely, but somewhat) tens or hundreds of hours trying to inspire poeple in that direction. :In a nutshell: Elitism... Ick. Truly meaningful electoral reform... Yay! My inability to communicate this message... tragic. : :- JenniferForUnity I'm in favor of truly meaningful electoral reform, and my satire was probably a bit harsh (I have that tendency). In my opinion all the internet based ideas (including this wiki) rise and fall on their ability to reach the "non-net people". Wanting to be inclusive and being inclusive are such different things. It doesn't mean putting up with ideas that are different from yours, it means bringing in people who have very few ideas about politics or the web in the first place and getting them up to speed fast enough to make meaningful contributions without turning them off entirely. Populism isn't populist if the populace doesn't show up, yeah?--Vive42 16:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC) :Your satire was way too harsh. :Your concerns about internet access are valid; however, there's a lot to be said for a forum with access available to millions of people, with potentially thousands or millions of people getting involved who would otherwise have no voice, and who are not paid for their lobbying and therefore not exposed to the same influences. And over time more people should get access to the net (particularly with more efforts going into developing low cost computers). :And if you're not convinced, that's cool - just don't bite people's heads off. Work on your own ideas. Or suggest an improvement on the ideas mentioned here. Or wait and watch - none of us knows exactly what will grow out of these experiments. --Singkong2005 04:45, 4 August 2006 (UTC) ::It's actually not entirely about low-cost computers or internet access. In the US I agree that many people have internet access and more will soon. The objection is more that the "movement" is being formed as a great new thing to give people, rather than reaching people where they are and finding out what they want in a movement or if they want a movement at all. As a canvasser and a former social worker I think that I have a better understanding of who I called "non-net people" than most. My job used to be counseling (people came to me to talk about themselves) and is now door-knocking (how much closer to 'the people' could I possibly be?). The issues that matter most to me are econimic justice issues and the people most in need of that type of change are also the least likely to be a part of something like this. So while I did not mean to be too harsh... I do stand firmly by the spirit of what I was saying. I'm interested in these net based ideas because I think you have the right attitude in terms of being inclusive. Otherwise I wouldn't be here at all. To be clear- I love the transparency stuff, but the "movement" stuff worries me. Unfortunately, if I already knew how to get people interested, invested, and empowered politically I would have done it already. Till then I hope the group I work for has the right idea, because I haven't heard better so far.--Vive42 04:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC) :::Vive, I've been door to door for environmental causes (for money), to remind people to vote (for fun), and to canvass for Dean (because I loved his Hundred Dollar Revolution). I've been in front of supermarkets gathering signatures for petitions (again for money) and coached high school policy debaters (again for love). The thing that I think makes the net transforming is that people like you and me bump into each other on the net, but we'd never meet out there in meatspace. The hope I have for 2008 is that we can coordinate a "door to door volunteer reform movement" that grows out of seeds like you and me and other wikians reading this. 30 years ago a grassroots movement had to start in *some specific place*. It was like a seed from a vine, carried by a bird and deposited in a new place. From that moment on, it grows and spreads by word of mouth, or it spreads by broadcast (with all the attendant problems of broadcast politics). There are fundamental limits on what is possible there. :::Because of the net, good ideas (and the people who are inspired by them) can reach retirees and soccer moms and college drop outs wondering where the American Dream went. And the ideas can be introduced simultaneously in Illionois, LA, Miami, and Juneau. Instead of a vine growing from a single seed we're more like dandylion fluff... starting in every nook and cranny all at the same time to cover the "entire lawn" with "happy little yellow flowers" in a single growing season. :::The old problems dissappear to be replaced by new problems. With a net movement I'm already seeing people who are ready to go to meetings and take to the streets trickle with no one for a hundred miles in any direction to do it with. Here's a unity movement yahoo group where people are showing up to get involved... we've got people who don't realize that THIS IS SHOUTING but they can still use email... and they want to help the country and there's no one for them to do it with yet. And then... it's not clear, assuming local groups form and get "real people" involved, how do you keep a national movement of amateurs even sort of "all on the same page". (I think wikis might be worth trying.) :::The heart of what I'm trying to do is get Campaigns Wikia aware that people with our techical skills and political bent can be really useful in helping to spread "the dandylion fluff" and helping the flowers that grow in our wake stay coordinated with each other. Techy people are not the heart of the movement... if we end up that way the movement was pointless... but we can be the wind... and we can hope that that the ideas we carry will inspire people in all the places they land. :::The idea I'm carrying is "a national online convention that selects a presidential candidate by ranked pair voting by every American with access to a computer". If we follow it up with a $50 dollar revolution like Dean but with a lower price point (IE 2 million people donate $50 to the online convention winner) then maybe we can get someone reasonable and pragmatic (and likable by 80% of the country) running things for a while. I don't know... it gives me hope for a future that sometimes seems pretty bleak. ::: - JenniferForUnity 01:45, 6 August 2006 (UTC) The "Unity Movement" reminds me of the movie "Meet John Doe". The John Doe movement was all about politics without any specific content - no politicians allowed, just the John Does of the neighborhood. But as things turned out, the John Doe Clubs were all financed by an oilman who had bought a newspaper to use as his mouthpiece, and who was secretly planning to establish fascism after being elected President on the John Doe ticket. Since it's a Frank Capra movie, the fascist fails, and we're left with the hope that an honest John Doe movement will be reborn. We already have a thriving bogus populist movement, established deliberately and at great expense in response to the brief rise of the New Left in the late Sixties and early Seventies. There was no single Grand Conspiracy, but a many-layered uprising of all the groups at the top of the food chain who were threatened by such possibilities as extending democracy into economic life or rethinking the assumptions of the Cold War. They formed the Business Roundtable and the Eagle Forum in 1972, the Heritage Foundation and the Trilateral Commission in 1973, the Cato Institute in 1977, and the Moral Majority in 1979. As different as some of these groups are from each other, they all acted to popularize a new way of thinking about freedom and democracy that was compatible with virtually unlimited corporate and military power. The stage was set for the strange presidency of Ronald Reagan and the marginalization of the "liberals." Since then, things have grown only more ugly and more desperate. Karl Rove politics and Fox News journalism have brilliantly directed much of the anger of the powerless American masses toward an increasingly fictitious liberal elite in academia and the media. American exceptionalism has expanded into something resembling mass psychosis. I'm not accusing the Unity people of trying to start another pseudo-populist platform for neo-fascism. But I can't see the point of focusing on new kinds of political activity while remaining scrupulously neutral about the ideas, assumptions, and institutions that dominate American political life today. Deadplanet 06:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC) :I see the Unity Movement as having relatively high level committments. It is against "important but polarizing issues of culture and pride" being central in our political debates. It sees discussions about flag burning and gay marriage as "not worth attention if they prevent discussion and action on the crucial stuff". The crucial stuff has to do with the national welfare: Having a coherent policy to deal with the ballooning national debt and trade deficit. Having an awareness that the oceans of the planet are being destroyed and fish production has actually declined for the first time in recorded history as a result. Trying to redo education in a way that prepares people to work and vote in an information economy. And so on. :The Unity Movement's "issue" is very high level. It is that political dynamics in the US should focus on pragmatically important things instead of "base motivating" fluff issues, and the outcome of these issues should be derived by compromise in the interests of all Americans. :If abortion is your number one issue, in either direction, then the Unity Movement is not (in a "totally agree with your issue" way) for you. The Unity Movement's position on abortion is "most people squirm over both dead babies and goverment control of women's bodies... why should only those 'pure of belief' on this issue (one way or the other) be the only allowed into office?" - JenniferForUnity 06:34, 26 July 2006 (UTC) Voting Update You can see the whole IRV process in tabular form you can also see it round by round with bar graphs. There are three reletively coherent groups voting: * Three people form the largest block. Their individual favorites are "Politics", "Better Campaigns", and "New Politics" with the last one being their combined winner. (IE everyone in this faction preferred "New Politics" to "Unity Wiki"). * The second group is two people vote for "Unity Wiki" as their faves. This is the only group with someone articulating a specific rationale for it (that person being JenniferForUnity). * A final group of one person wants the name to be Campaigns Wikia and (if that doesn't work) they want none of the options listed to win.